Kwan to Spend Some Time in Athletes’ Village

Michelle Kwan, intent on savoring the Olympic experiences she missed when she chose not to stay in the athletes’ village at Nagano in 1998, said Friday she will remain in Salt Lake City for the rest of the Games instead of returning to her Lake Arrowhead training base.

Kwan said she will alternate staying in the village and staying with her parents at a hotel but will practice at the official Olympic arenas, the Salt Lake Ice Center and the secondary Steiner Arena.

Kwan, who narrowly missed winning a gold medal in 1998, is favored to win this year. She had planned to fly back to California today after marching in Friday’s opening ceremony. She changed her mind about returning late Thursday after testing the facility and finding it to her liking.

The women’s competition doesn’t begin until Feb. 19.

“I thought, ‘I could stay here instead of wasting two days through flying,’” the six-time U.S. champion and four-time world champion said. “Travel being the way it is, with security checkpoints, everyone can relate to that.”

Sasha Cohen of Laguna Niguel, runner-up to Kwan at last month’s U.S. competition, planned to return to Lake Arrowhead after the opening ceremony.

“Because of the altitude, and also just to have a place that I can really train and not be in a competition mode,” she said.

Sarah Hughes, the third member of the U.S. women’s delegation, will leave for Colorado Springs, Colo., where she practiced before arriving in Salt Lake City.

“Just to get away,” she said. “We’re not competing for two weeks. It’ll be nice. When I come back, I’ll be fully mentally ready.”

Cohen said she has scrapped plans to try a quadruple salchow and become the first woman to land a quadruple jump in competition.

She missed three attempts this season and wasn’t landing it often enough in practice to satisfy her coach, John Nicks.

“We were training it after nationals,” she said, “but more recently, Mr. Nicks and I decided we want to do a safer program. My triple-triple [combinations] have gone really well and we’re excited.”

Said Nicks: “Surprisingly enough, Sasha and I have been more or less on the same page the last two or three weeks.... We decided to play the percentages and go for two clean programs.”

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Facing a battery of reporters during a news conference Friday, Kwan said she found it difficult to believe four years have passed since Nagano.

“It feels like yesterday I was at a press conference in Nagano, talking about another opportunity to go to the Olympics,” the 21-year-old Torrance native said. “Wow, here I am now in Salt Lake.

“I’m glad I stayed amateur.”

Kwan offered another of her frequent hints that she might stay Olympic eligible until the 2006 Turin Games and pointed to the presence of 29-year-old Maria Butyrskaya of Russia as a precedent.

“I can’t guarantee you anything,” she said. “Skating is such a wonderful sport and I’m having so much fun doing it. Competition is stressful, but who knows?”